Christmas Child

Love this movie 2004 Love William R Moses all the cast Muse Watson great as sheriff. We need more movies like this .Steven Curtis Chapman So beautiful thank you Bill Ewing

This might have been a good movie, but it just did not feel complete. It didn't feel like all the loose ends were resolved. There seemed no answer to the question of the main character's father. What happened to him? Why did the main character, the reporter, not try to find out about him? After finding out about his birth mother he seemed to have no interest in finding out about his birth father. The movie did not indicate what happened to the birth father. What was the town sheriff so out to get him? There seemed no clear explanation for that other than he didn't want him snooping around. It just left too many unanswered questions.

Christmas Child is better than a lot of movies I can name that cost ten times as much to make. I thought the opening scenes between Moses and Megan Follows were excellent and they had good chemistry and excellent dialog. Sadly, when Follows leaves the story, it seems to lose a lot of energy and slow way down.

While not full of holes, neither is it seamless or easy to follow especially from an emotional standpoint. The messages are highly positive but delivered in a slow way through the eyes of the troubled protagonist who seems to fail to appreciate what he is given. His emotional distance and alienation do not "develop" along with the story thereby keeping the emotonal tempo from moving upward to match what he is learning on his "Quest".

The final problem I had with it was that the return of Follows to the story (thereby wrapping up a major, major plot line) is given short shrift and bypasses the serious and emotionally fulfilling aspects. I have a feeling that this would have been handled at more and better length in the written version.

So, for trying to tell a good story and show with some realism a "slice of life" that is far more common and more real than typical Hollywood tripe, I give it credit. The actors are very good throughout and there are many moments that will make you think.

I had to do some math while watching this one to get the births and deaths and gifts of mangers right, but it was worth it.

I agree with some of the reviewers that the missing father issue was odd. And why the sheriff was so evil was not clearly explained (I wanted the sheriff arrested and locked up, to be honest, his nasty tone seemed out of place in the movie).

The lead is always a personable actor, but he looked too similar to the pastor, so distractingly the viewer might think they were related.

It was refreshing not to have a sappy, brain-dead, infantile Christmas movie, like has become the norm in 2020.

Reporter Jack Davenport was adopted as a baby and the adoption was sealed. He is now in his forties and his only living adoptive parent, his father, passed away several months ago. It is Christmas and Jack is finally getting around to going through his father's things. There he finds a clue to his birth in Clearwater, Texas so he uses a story in Dallas as an excuse to go to Clearwater to look for his birth parents.

This movie came out in 2004 and I have seen it several times since. I can't say that about very many movies, Christmas or otherwise. This movie is very different from the dozens of predictable romance "Christmas" movies that are out there. It presents an interesting story set at Christmas with positive messages and a positive outcome. I can highly recommend it.